The Spoons That Are My Ears!

Yesterday I went in search of the phenomenon that I like to call "Prometheus Teddy." Why do I like to call it that? Because I'm pretentious. Ah well! Prometheus Teddy is a teddy bear chained to a cliff somewhere in the Gower, between Pwlldu and Southgate, on one of the more obscure stretches of the coast. I first came upon him in 2003 -- from a distance he looked like a little malign man squatting on a ledge -- and I returned a year later to see if he was still there. He was. So I decided to go back and look again. This time he was gone!

What happened to him? Was he pecked completely away by eagles, or did a miniature Hercules rescue him? Maybe he became a slimy talentless nepotist and got a job at the Dylan Thomas Centre? Who knows? Not I! On a more serious note, it seems that he was part of a memorial, a shrine to two dead people. I took a photo of the plaque bolted to the cliff face next to where he had hung in his chains. Presumably he represented these people in some sense. A grave responsibility for a ted! This photo (as well as the others I took on the way) can be seen on my Flickr account. The Gower is a beautiful place, no doubt about it, but also spooky in parts!

The entire walk took most of the day. It was amazing and delightful and also quite exhausting... I met Miss Frisbee Girl on the way back and we went for a drink. The evening turned out to be incredibly romantic. I am intensely happy right now. I'm in love, in fact, and she's in love with me. I'm trying to persuade her to come to Portugal with me. Maybe she'll come and visit me in Madrid when I get there... But there are six weeks or more before I leave, so plenty of time to arrange stuff like that!

As for writing news... too much is happening to talk about! I've got loads of stuff coming out in loads of places. I'll try to make some sort of list. 2007 might turn out to be an eight book year for me. Crikey! Meanwhile, Queen Zoe of Finland very sweetly posted this photo of herself and her sub-Arctic pals performing in a playified version of one of my short stories. This has filled me with a mild urge to write a play, something very short, or rather to return to a play I started writing back in 1991 but never completed. I turned that unfinished play into the short story 'The End of the Road' in 1992 and it became my first TTA acceptance the following year. Now I want to finally finish the original play version. Then I'm going to send it to Queen Zoe on the offchance that she and her frozen companions will perform it. They probably won't, but they might.